Donald Trump's grizzly cabinet choices dampen talk he will govern as a moderate

Betsy DeVos distinguished herself trying to duck guns-in-classrooms question

Her hearing has been delayed until 17 January (Getty)

History is about to unfold in Washington, but let’s talk grizzly bears for a moment. Actually, we won’t be alone; the social mediaverse has been wall-to-wall grizzlies this week.

For that we have Betsy DeVos to thank, the Michigan billionaire picked by Donald Trump to lead America’s giant school system. She, like several other of his cabinet nominees, had her ritual cross-examination by US senators on Capitol Hill this week and, well, it didn’t go especially well.

There was much, in fact, to make any teacher – or parent – weep. As when Senator Elizabeth Warren asked about her level of personal experience of 1) running any large-scale organisation, 2) running a $1 trillion lending bank which the Department of Education is, or 3) taking out college loans herself (or her children doing so). Answers: none, none and none.

Ms DeVos does have a years-long record of promoting private charter schools, an effort that necessarily implies taking funds and talent from the public system she wishes to lead. She also has one of giving generously to Republicans. That would be about $200 million over time, she said, from herself and members of her family. Enough to buy any cabinet position, perhaps?

Now to those four-legged mammals that like to eat honey (and possibly young children). When Senator Christopher Murphy asked whether she believed in keeping guns out of schools she ducked, suggesting it should be up to local governments to make that call. Why? Because in some parts of the country a school might need a gun “to protect from potential grizzlies”.

The grizzly bear. Reason enough to keep stationary cupboards packed with rifles? Betsy DeVos thinks so (Reuters)

Heavens (to Betsy). It didn’t seem like she was trying to be funny. School officials in the part of Wyoming that Ms DeVos was allegedly referring to have since noted that while bears are a concern they do not stock their stationery cupboards with hunting rifles for the day they show up for science class. The sheer insensitivity of her answer left jaws hanging. Senator Murphy is from Connecticut. In 2012 he was a Congressman whose district encompassed Sandy Hook, the site of a mass shooting that took the lives of 20 elementary schoolchildren and six teachers.

You can’t blame liberals for seizing on the gaffe. This is not just about Ms DeVos. All week, the Senate has been in full throttle vetting Mr Trump’s cabinet choices. A few may be approved by the time he takes the Oath of Office. The process is serving as a reminder that any hopes we may have that Mr Trump will be more moderate – or just more sane – as president than he was as campaigner seem foolish when you consider the people he is surrounding himself with.

As has been widely observed, it will be a team dominated by grey-haired white men and, in many cases, billionaires and people selected for jobs they are either utterly unqualified for or which present serious conflict-of-interest issues.

Where to begin? To head the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Mr Trump tapped Scott Pruitt, whose favourite hobby as attorney general of Oklahoma was to sue said body for daring to impose regulations designed precisely to, well, protect the environment. And when asked at his hearing if he believed humans were the cause of global warming he said he wasn’t sure. He might want to read Wednesday’s news about our planet achieving yet another temperature record.

To head the Department of Energy, he tapped former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who while running for president in 2011 said that that same department was one of three he would abolish. (You recall his “oops” moment when on a debate stage he could only remember two of the three).

Just on Wednesday he settled on former Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue for Agriculture Secretary. Some in the Peach State will remember his response to its crippling drought in 2007. He led hundreds to the State Capitol to pray for rain, asking God to forgive Georgians for their previous water wastefulness. (He did also take the more practical step of imposing restrictions.)

Who else do we have? Tom Price is up to set healthcare policy and thus take the lead in replacing Obamacare. Also from Georgia, he said during his confirmation hearing he wasn’t worried about poorer Americans losing full insurance so long as they are covered for “catastrophic” hospitalisation. That’s nice. For the Department of Housing and Urban Development, we have a former brain surgeon. Why not? At least Ben Carson offers diversity.

On Thursday, Steven Mnuchin, the likely new Treasury Secretary, was lambasted by Democrats for his ownership at the time of the crash of OneWest Bank, an institution that profited from foreclosing on thousands of homeowners who found they couldn’t pay their mortgages. The bank was dubbed a “foreclosure machine” in the press, a description Mr Mnuchin has pushed back against. At his hearing, Mr Price was asked to explain his purchases of stocks in healthcare companies while at the same time voting on laws that directly affected them. If most saw a glaring conflict of interest in the transaction, Mr Price apparently did not.

The suggestion that Mr Trump may in his bones be less conservative than he pretended to be on the trail last year is not a new one. At the start of this week, he startled many in his own party by dropping hints in an interview with The Washington Post that the healthcare policy he would like to see could actually be more progressive than Obamacare, not less.

But it is hard to square that with the people he has assembled to govern with him. With firm control over the process, it is unlikely that Republicans will allow any of his cabinet nominees to fall by the wayside, however ignorant or deliberately obfuscatory they have appeared under interrogation on the Hill. That includes Ms DeVos, she of grizzly fame.

On Twitter, Mr Trump has a word for states of affairs as disappointing and dispiriting as this.

Sad.